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Jan
14
Sing! (a speech)
Filed Under The Lighter Side
Hello, my name is Jiming, its a Chinese name separated into two words. Ji, means luck, and Ming, the sound of bird. It gives me a picture of a lucky bird singing on a branch. I don’t know my parents intention behind the name. I asked many times, but there is no consistent answer, so I give up. However, I did remember the first time I sang.
That was a Christmas Eve, and I was only three years old. My father wrote the lyrics of Away in a Manager on the door, and gently closed the door behind. He started to teach me to sing, and we started to sing very quietly, with curtains closed. You may wonder why we did it so secretively. This happened during Chinese Cultural Revolution. If you have known Chinese history, it was a period when there was no love, when sons and daughters turned against their parents, and when Black was White and White was Black. We were only able to celebrate Christmas behind closed doors and closed curtains. But we were so lucky! We never got caught! If we did, we probably would be punished very severely. We were so hopeful when we sang! And we were so happy when we sang!
Singing brought my family happiness and hope, and gradually I took it as an enjoyment. After the Cultural Revolution, my parents went back to workforce, but my family was still poor and couldn’t afford the nice things. My father had really wished that I could learn piano, but there was no money for it, neither did we have the space to hold the instrument. Well, I didn’t know what a piano was, so I just went ahead to enjoy myself by humming the songs.
There was a period when humming songs became a support for me. That was when I was 25 years old. I just got an MBA degree, and I was a single girl from China trying to make it to the US job market. I was not a native speaker, didn’t have much work experience, and was in need of an immigration sponsorship. I experienced a period of so called “hanging” time. You felt you just kind of “hang” there, and the songs I sang that time, every word, had made an impact on me and lifted my spirit.
Eventually things start to look good for me, one day when I was arranging flowers for the flower ministry, a woman turned to me and said “did you know of any Chinese hymns?” “Sure, I do.” I answered and I started to sing one. After a quiet moment, she paused and said “Can you come with me and sing to Barbara? She had worked in China before.” “Sure.” We went to visit Barbara at her home. She was eighty years old, gentle and kind, but not in good health. So I sang a Chinese hymn to her and thought that was it. After about a year on an occasion, I ran into the woman in the flower ministry again. She stopped me and called me “Jiming, remember Barbara?” I couldn’t recall. “You know the woman you sang Chinese hymn to?” “Oh, yes.” Memory started to come back. “She passed away shortly after our visit.” It was a surprise since at my age it was still difficult to see death that close. “Your singing made her really happy that day.” I was speechless. I never realized my singing could bring hope and happiness to another person.
Singing makes a turn on me from giving our family happiness and hope, bringing me enjoyment and spiritual support to bringing others happiness and hope. You may not like to sing, but I believe you will have your own form of singing, be it cooking, writing, acting, gardening, or whatever you enjoy in taking, and that, has walked through many phases of your life. And you may wonder what great things this can bring to other people? I hope you will all join me to sing, and sing to the melody of life! Keep singing! Thank you!